Joshua gripped the rope tightly, not trusting to the belt clamp alone as the party of five slowly dragged themselves from the Lander across the frozen, rocky ground, under the pitch skies of the small planetoid.

Colonel Colmer and his men, Street and Eldon, took the lead, pounding dog bolts into the icy, shale-like ground every twelve feet. The heavy environment suits were a blessing, the weight an aid to keeping their feet in the frigid gale winds that tore around them. Rossiter came last, behind Joshua, untying the line from the last dog, then rappelling his way to the next eyelet, to repeat the performance.

Slowly, the tilted, crashed remains of an old missionary lighter hove into sight.

How, thought Joshua, in perdition, did a missionary scout end up out here? Why would a stranded Friar broadcast cryptic numbers rather than an S.O.S?  Logan had been more excited about finding an abstract rhythm in a Quantum signal band than he had been about finding the origin of the Armageddon radio burst. The excited old Priest almost forgot to mention it.

Joshua cursed again as a sudden gust almost blew away his dubious hold on the lifeline, stifling an automatic reflex to cross himself. Like Ferdinand, he would have to do his penance later. From his current position, Joshua could make out some of the Lander's details. There was a cable leading down the side, stuffed into a rent filled with foaming vacuum putty, the standard do-all of space going emergency kits. The seal on the lighter door appeared puffed out, which did not bode well.

Sir Colmer and company, having arrived, were already busy with the hatch, so Joshua increased his efforts to catch up.

Suddenly, Joshua felt a hard crack against the back of his helmet, and his feet pulled out from under him. The back end of the lifeline jerked sideways and went lax. He fell with a whump onto the hard ground with a force felt even through the padded environment suit. Still tightly clasping the rope, he could see Street pulled to his knees ahead of him as Joshua's drag on the line suddenly increased and angled down. Skittering sideways in the suit, Joshua managed a position where he could look back. Rossiter, in one of his tricky maneuvers, had let the line get away from him. Joshua could make out his tumbling form as it slid, bounced, and slid again away at an angle from the main party.

Rossiter fetched up finally against a rounded protrusion far to Joshua's left. Pawing and twisting, the private managed to bend his body half around the rocky bubble, but it was plain this hold would not last long.

Wrestling his body around, back in line with the party's original direction, Joshua could see Colonel Colmer and the now unbalanced Street clinging between the lighter and the forward-most piton, keeping tension on the line against what was now solely the weight of the floundering Cardinal.

Sir Colmer risked a hand away from the piton to indicate the infrared transmitter affixed to the side of his headgear. Joshua stared for a moment in uncomprehending panic, whipping his head around inside the encasing suit, trying to get another view of Rossiter. Understanding dawned on him. He jabbed down on the chin switch inside the suit.

"...the hell happened! Turn on the god damned receiver! The receiver! Can you hear yet?"

"I...I can hear. Rossiter lost hold. Can you see him off to the left? No that's wrong. Your right. My left."

"I see him," said Colmer. "We will have to run new spikes back to his position. It will take some time. You will have to come on forward. Don't try to get up. Pull yourself along on the ice pack. Cinch the rope around your waist rings like Private Rossiter was doing, and play yourself up the line. Can you do that?"

"Yes, I suppose, get to Rossiter! I'll take care of myself. He can't hold on where he is for long!"

Sir Colmer turned away starting to run out the new pitons and drag his way back towards the stony outcrop and the hopefully still sensate Rossiter. No longer inline with the infra red beam, Joshua was plunged back into his separate world. Rossiter couldn't be heard, as his head still faced in the wrong direction for reception of the military line - of -sight com gear.

The black Ops close combat suits were the only ones available that were armored sufficiently to stand against the vicissitudes of the fast revolving worldlet with its vicious, if thin, methane winds and jagged ice. They only had the five of them, and that only due to Dio's foresight. The blessing was muted by the fact that such suits had absolutely no broadcast radio gear, just line of sight IR. Joshua contemplated the cold warrior code that lack evoked. Men sent out in these during a wartime maneuver were expected to return with shields high, or on them, without broadcasting to the enemy meantime.

Struggling, he managed to collect enough free line from behind him to wrap around his waist. Clinging for dear life, he passed the now doubled line through the remaining loops on the alternate side of his suit. Grabbing desperately at the emerging loop, he began the feat of progressively pulling the line through, inching forward against the blistering wind, and taking up the slack cord by winding it around his arm.

Intermittently the wind would roll him over, so that he ended up flat on his back, kicking down at the harsh icebound rock for traction. Joshua concentrated on reaching the ship, and kept himself from thinking about what was happening to Rossiter. Eventually the hands of Street and Eldon closed about him, dragging him to his feet and inside the now open outer lock of the decrepit lighter.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Private Eldon brought his helmet up against Joshua's, eschewing the infrared at such close quarters.

"You O.K?" Joshua heard over the roaring wind that had picked up some, were it possible, during his trek. The almost pure methane gale was noisy, if not breathable.

"Yes, yes I'm fine. Did you get to Rossiter yet?"

"Naw, Colonel Colmer is making his way back to the ship along the old piton line. Rossiter lost his hold on that rock, and went off way outta sight. We don't have that much line. Colmer'll bounce the Lander up 'n over a bit an' try to spot 'em. We gotta' finish up here meanwhile. Only have an hour, then we gotta' be getting back."

Eldon thumped the tank on the back of Joshua's environment suit "Oxy, you know. Don't worry. If Rossiter didn't crack up on somethin' out there, Colmer will get em' back. It's a small world, after all. Rossiter's got a couple a pitons himself. All he's gotta' do is spike hisself down and wait. He'll think of it sooner or later. Look, we were trained for this kinda' stuff. We was more worried about you."

Joshua was struck with the truth of it. He hadn't even remembered about the IR suit transmitter. The suits were virtually padded armor in construction. Breathing time was the main limitation here. You were more likely to die of oxygen deprivation than of bouncing about in a high wind.

***

The whole thing was gruesome. The missionary's cabin was littered and filthy. The Friar's corpse shared the floor with uneaten food, stripped wire,discarded tools and disassembled sections of equipment. Given the circumstances, Joshua was again thankful for the cumbersome environment suit. The smell would have been intolerable without the barrier it provided. A frightened expression, frozen across the corpse's features made a horrific impression on Joshua, one that would haunt him for days. He motioned to Street and Eldon, and patted the internal hatch that led to the cargo hold. A bright flare of cutters soon flashed to life, and the cabin became a stroboscopic nightmare that only worsened the horror. Street motioned Joshua back, turning off his torch, to grasp a pry bar.

A few tugs later and the door swung silently free in the airless, but now particle filled ship. Eldon entered first, then motioned for Joshua to follow. Joshua bent forward, watching carefully as his encumbering suit leg cleared the lock threshold, then went completely through. Raising his gaze to take in the hold, he saw--nothing. He passed one hand along some scrape marks where paint had rubbed off on one bulkhead. The field mission kit should be in here, he thought. Something on the flooring caught his attention, and he bent again. Dirt and a little rock drizzled across the decking. He passed his gloved hand through the light layer. It shifted under the glove, smearing a pattern through it.

The party finished their investigations with the lighter quickly and recovered the deceased Monk's remains.

Colonel Colmer recovered the distressed Rossiter without further trouble. He had indeed tied himself down to a few pitons about a quarter mile away, against another wind-sanded outcrop. Colmer lifted the Cristo's Lander, and battled the ship across the windy landscape to private Rossiter's new position. Landing upwind, he used a winch line, playing himself back to the soldier's site, and used the winch to drag them both slowly back. Rossiter had been sheepishly embarrassed to admit he had let himself become too flustered to tie off at the first opportunity, and took a terrific ribbing from Street and Eldon on account of it.

"I had just set a new dog inna' ground. Tugged on it and it came loose. I went flyin'back, an' the wind, she caught me good. That was all she wrote. Off I went. Thought I got 'er under control when I grabbed the first rock, but I couldn't let a hand free ta' reach my kit, an well, I slipped off'a it anyway."

He winced as Eldon took off the suit top, revealing a nasty red welt just below Rossiter's shoulder. It was a fine match for several other marks and contusions that peppered the stoic soldier's frame. Somehow, the man had avoided any broken bones or permanent injury. It would be several days before he would walk again without pain though, suit or no suit.

Later, back aboard the CHRISTOS, Joshua spread the pictures they had taken out on the desk of his small room. Old, bearded, wasted, the remains of the Friar were now encased on ice below decks. The trip recorder module, scavenged from the wreck, was being downloaded by Brother Mendel. Other artifacts included some personal effects: Bible, Rosary, a meager pile of dented ship's ration containers. There was nothing with an immediate story to tell. No notes, no diary, not even the ship log that should have been there.

Arlyis' and Father Logan's discovery of musical patterns in the quantum band, similar to sounds on a recording of Logan's, had been complete serendipity. He compared Logan's report with the SONG WEAVER file, and glanced again at the pile of IC chips still decorating the desk's outer corner. Well, certainly there were a few observations about all this worth reporting on.

There was the origin of the mystery broadcast to report - an absolute must tell, of course-and the college was looking into the source of the New Vatica recording. There was nothing from Diocullus yet. Joshua picked up a photo of the wasted, dead Friar, and sat back pecking the edge of the desk with it. At least they now knew where the cryptic broadcasts originated, if not why they were generated. The lighter's solar sail array was still extended when it was found, torn, crushed of course, but extended. No ship would try a reentry without the sails furled first. Whatever originally happened to the lighter had occurred in flight, not in landing. Much like in the SONG WEAVER case, he realized. This too, meant something.

"Where have you been off to my old friend?" whispered Joshua. There was no cache of church literature or paraphernalia inside the minimal hold of the lighter.

That was something. In the early days of the church, before New Vatica was completed, a dominion of Friars had been established to crew these small ships. They searched for new colonies, targeting likely destinations, hoping to found the rock of the church on worlds to which small venture exoduses had been launched during the first expansion era.

Eventually the sect's function was terminated by the current Holy See. The attrition rate among the Friars had been unbelievably high. Many Friars, seeking dreams of being called "Founder", defeated by too many arrivals at barren destinations, did not return.

The fanatic Friars would punch up just one more possible destination, just one more, until they were lost, dead of starvation, or worse.

But our Friar found...something. Someplace that called on him to unload his precious cargo, set up his little mission. Or, thought Joshua, were these items just scattered somewhere, lost and abandoned? Joshua tried, but couldn't imagine it. Not on your first try, though. Not at your registered destination. We checked that against the ships registry number. No, you gave it just one more try, in the Draco.